Long time trading is the best way to achieve consistent results

Hi, I am Sandile Madlala, a trader who was doing so badly in the past at trading that people even told me to give up in trading seek something more capable to producing the kind of financial results that I wanted.

Well, long story made short, I did accomplish the first part to what it takes to have the kind of results I'm looking for, and that's understanding how to trade in the first place, second part was and still is a bit difficult, but as time goes by, I'm getting the hang of it, and that's managing my emotions and expectations in the markets i.e. trading psychology

For the past few months of just doing what most professional traders recommend and playing the long haul of the game, I saw amazing and drastic changes in my trading logbook, but unfortunately a huge chunk of profits that took months to build were gone in mere minutes (I kid you not) and it's not because of what a intermediate trader would suspect to be the cause.

No, I did not all of a sudden decide to trade with more money than I usually do, in fact, everything stayed the same, the only difference was the type of instrument I decided to trade, anyways, here's what I learnt.

1. Long term trading is way better than short term (in and out) trading

Honestly, for what I've seen? entering in a trade and deciding to stay in that trade (trading with the trend) is a way better performance and goal accomplishing approach to trading than the popular "millions in a minute" approach to trading (not saying you can't pull profits from this approach, it's just way harder to remain consistent with it), most of the profits I made was due to me having entered a apple stock trade once and riding the market so to speak till time came for me to withdraw the profits I had accumulated until the unfavorable market cycle (according to my strategy) passes over so that I can re-enter the stock again.

Everytime I have entered trades in a scalping way (trying to trade an opportunity that has a short term window period), I've made little profits and huge losses, in and out eventually results in me taking loss that just wears down my profits more quicker than it would if I was making  profits (and this also affects a person's psychology, emotions and sense of discipline).

So looking for opportunities that offer a long term window of opportunity (by assessing the trend or long term market direction) eventually outperforms any short term trading performances one was initiating.

If you suspecting an "investing" approach to trading where short tern market moves can chunk away at your capital or investment but eventually start producing profits in the long term, you're correct! The proper way to stay invested in the markets for a long period of time (don't look at all these guys on social media making crazy money in minutes, no one makes money all the time in this game, something's got to give)

2. The type of instrument you trade is very important

If you starting out with a small trading account say for example, $100, $200, $30, $50, or even a $1000, the types of financial instruments you trade are key.

Trading is more about managing your emotions and not letting your emotions do the thinking for you, and you can't accomplish that if you trading something that takes $10 or $20 in a matter of 20 minutes even though you trading it with $0.01 portion of your capital, you going to freak out and your emotions will start talking things that will make you lose more money (like revenge trading "I have to make this money back")

There are financial instruments that are more "expensive" to trade than others, not only are they more expensive but they move much faster than other financial instruments so to offset the risk one is taking on them while passing by other financial instruments, which is good if you enter in the right direction (the direction that can make you money as soon as you enter) but very bad if you entered in the wrong direction.

Instruments like cryptocurrencies, CFDs and exotic currency pairs are the type of instruments that are expensive and risky, like I say, if you enter in the wrong position on these, prepare for pain if you not going to cut the cord quick, very rewarding if you enter with the flow of the market (trend) and it so happens to be flowing at that very moment, because there, you can go in and stay in.

But if you get it wrong, rather exit the trade, cry over the money you lost and go onto financial instruments that are much affordable, "mediumly" fast and are just as rewarding as the ones I've mentioned above, just it would take a little longer to get the type of profits from them compared to cryptos, CFDs likes Nasdaq, S&P500, German Dax 30, Nikkei and so forth.

Exotics would be currencies like USDZAR, USDMXN, etc.

The more affordable and "just as rewarding" financial instruments are Major Pairs like GBPUSD (anything with the sterling in it is rewarding), EURUSD (euro is also rewarding and liquid) or even what is called Cross Pairs like EURCAD, NZDJPY etc.

The other more affordable financial instrument is stocks, I love these because their market performance is similar to those of the CFD on the trading platform or price chart (they look similar and move similar) so anything with a stock trade on google, amazon, apple, tesla, Netflix, etc., is rewarding.

Which brings me to my next and final point.

3. You have to be patient

Now, I have to admit, I'm not the most patient person you will find in the planet and I have come to suspect that very few people are patient and understanding in the fast track civilization we are living in today.

I can't begin to tell you how excruciating it was to discipline myself in being patient, imagine looking at your trade just losing money for like 3 to 4 weeks straight even though you trading with the trend? How patient would you be? Maybe by the 2nd week, you'd be like "Okay, that's enough of this nonsense, either I see dollar signs or I'm out of here!" but that's the kind of patience we talking about here.

The worst part is that your emotions start talking to you, I call them "the voices" because they start talking doubt into your mind, "Maybe you entered in the wrong direction", "Maybe the market direction has changed but you just can't see it.", "Maybe the markets know that you've entered and now they deliberately changing direction because they want to hurt you," you know, the common things that the mind starts thinking when things are going the way you want them to go.

This comes from expecting the markets to do something that they not entitled to at the moment, many times as traders, we tell ourselves as we enter trades "with this trade, I expect to make money instantaneously!" we sort of go into this marriage with each trade we enter, "for better or for worse till death (of my account balance) do us part." but it doesn't have to be that way.

I like what one of our favored financial vlogs presenter and investor (here in South Africa) Nicolette Mashile, known as "The Financial Bunny once said, she said that whenever she invests, she closes her eyes, that is, she closes her laptop or investing platform and carries on about her life, after a few months she will check on her investment just to see how things are going.

That's it, that's the approach we (as traders of forex, cryptocurrency, etc.) should be adopting, upon entering in a trade and having made sure that we are in line with the  overall market direction of that instrument, we should just close our platform and go on living life and dealing with everyday stresses in our lives instead of checking everyday if our trades have produced profits yet.

You don't see the farmer waking up every morning and going to the field to check if the fruit seeds they planted a day, week, or month ago are now ripe for the harvesting, rather what you would see is a farmer waking up in the morning to go to a field where they will continue to nurture their investment by watering it, fertilizing it, fumigating it so that the crop doesn't get eaten by insects, etc.

Nurture your investments and one of the ways by which to do that is to just leave it alone, once you plant your trade (having analyzed correctly) just leave your seed to do its thing and in due time you will wake up one day to see it budding and shooting out the ground (producing a small amount of profits) - leave it and carry on living your life, sooner or later what will happen is that you will forget and in a few months or year's time you will remember that you had opened a trade and rush to check it just in case you've lost all the money you had in your account(please set a stop loss of some sort, please!) 

What you might find might surprise you with a smile on your face and with an air of confidence that you are now a professional trader.

That's it from me for now.

Thanks